The Life-eater

In the swamp-bound village of La Foubelle, a mysterious nocturnal horror is draining the townspeople of life, leaving behind shriveled corpses and a trail of panic. Doctor Hugo Lamontaine, a hard-drinking physician steeped in voodoo, demonology, and folk magic, suspects a force far older and stranger than disease. When schoolmaster Noel Pelletier begs him to save Evelyn l'Brest, the woman he loves, Lamontaine reveals a terrifying truth: an elemental spirit is feeding on human vitality, and it may have been summoned by someone in the village with hidden mediumistic powers. As deaths mount and the heat thickens the atmosphere of dread, Lamontaine and Constable Le Front confront a shape-shifting presence in the darkness and trace the evil to Aaron Kronk, a swamp-dwelling schemer bent on terrorizing the village for profit. Kronk answers with psychic assault, iron-fearing monstrosity, and ruthless violence, forcing Lamontaine to arm himself with iron, drug Pelletier as bait, and turn the schoolmaster's cottage into a trap. The final battle becomes a desperate clash of courage, occult knowledge, and greed, exposing a nightmare that is part supernatural menace and part hypnotic fraud. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.